PGW(Gm)22(CDF)

Cardiff Castle and Bute Park  

I  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Cardiff  

Gabalfa  

317594  

177252  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Urban public park  

1778; 1867-1900; 1920s  

Bute Park is registered as one of the largest urban parks in the country, and with Pontcanna Fields and Sophia Gardens to the west forms a huge public open space in the centre of Cardiff. The park's designer and planter, Andrew Pettigrew, was one of the most important park designers of the second half of the nineteenth century, and the open, flowing informal design allowed a smooth transition from a private pleasure ground to a public park. Much of the Victorian planting, particularly of ornamental trees, survives. The grounds of Cardiff Castle have a long history of landscaping, going back to the mediaeval period. The grounds owe their present day appearance to late eighteenth-century landscaping by Capability Brown and late nineteenth-century alterations by the 3rd Marquis of Bute. The park became a public park after 1947. The registered area shares important group value with Cardiff Castle (LB: 13662; scheduled monument Gm171) associated animal wall (LB: 21696), stables (LB: 13764) and nineteenth-century park lodges (LB: 21697 west lodge; LB: 13751 north lodge), and the remains of Black Friars (LB: 13663; scheduled monument Gm173). The grounds of Cardiff Castle are enclosed in a high, crenellated stone wall, with a wall walk around the top. The space within the wall is roughly square and flat, with a large earthen bank against the wall on the north, east, and part of the south side. The level area is laid out to a large lawn, with grass and mixed trees on the banks. A cobble path leads from the south to the north gates. The motte is a circular, steep-sided mound, with a stone shell keep on top. Its sides are covered in rough grass. A spiral path, now disused but still visible, winds up it, starting on the west side. Around the foot of the motte is a wide water-filled moat. The present-day appearance of the castle grounds is largely due to late eighteenth-century and late nineteenth-century alterations and planting. Of the mediaeval and Tudor gardens nothing remains. In 1778 Capability Brown undertook a limited amount of landscaping in the grounds for the 4th Earl of Bute. He cleared the interior by removing the buildings from the former outer bailey, in the eastern half of the enclosure, and by demolishing the cross wall. He stripped the ivy off the keep, cut down the trees growing on the motte, made the spiral walk and filled in the moat. In 1794 Robert Clutterbuck noted in his journal that the green walks of the castle 'owe their disposition to the celebrated Brown'. The layout was very simple: there was a single gravel walk around the edge on two levels. On the north and east sides it was along the top of the ramparts, on the south and west at ground level. The remainder of the interior was a 'fine level lawn', described in 1804 (Donovan, Excursions through South Wales, vol. 1) as 'a smoothly mown-grass plat'. Donovan also mentioned the spiral path 'that thrice encircles the lofty mount'. In 1797 Henry Wigstead commented that: 'a very fine gravel walk is raised all round the walls, which is a public promenade' (Tour to North and South Wales). A gothick summerhouse appears to have stood in the south-east corner of the castle ward, on top of the bank. It is shown in a painting by Paul Sandby published in 1775 but dating to 1773 and another by S. Mazell of approximately the same date. By 1830, the date of the Woods map of Cardiff, there is no building in the south-east corner, only a circular mount. Further nineteenth-century maps, and an oil painting of 1826, also show this mount, with a level observation platform on top and a spiral walk up it. Bute Park is elongated north-south, bounded on the west by the river Taff, and on the east, for most of its length, by the dock feeder canal. The character of the park is informal and flowing: spacious grounds, laid out with winding walks and areas of open grass alternating with specimen trees in grass, borders, and less manicured woodland. The park was laid out ornamentally on the land of five farms, part of which is known as Cooper's Fields, as part of the pleasure grounds of Cardiff Castle, the seat of the Marquises of Bute. The 2nd Marquis moved into the castle in 1814, and until the 1850s the castle grounds were open to the public. In 1858 his widow opened Sophia Gardens, on the west bank of the river Taff, to the public to compensate for the closure of the castle grounds, which then became the private grounds of the castle. It was the 3rd Marquis who began laying out the gardens and grounds in 1871. These were in the charge of Mr Andrew Pettigrew, who was brought down from Dumfries House, a Bute property in Scotland. Pettigrew was a highly skilled and influential gardener and landscaper, and was responsible for much of the layout and planting. By the time of the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map (1879) the bones of the present-day layout of the park were in place. Much tree and shrub planting was to follow. After Burges's death in 1881 his former assistant, William Frame, built the animal wall that Burges had designed to the south of the castle grounds, enclosing a narrow strip of sloping ground that was laid out with formal flower beds. In 1925-30 the 4th Marquis's architect, J.P. Grant, moved the animal wall to its present position along the south boundary of Bute Park, where it was extended, with further animals being sculpted by Alexander Carrick. On the death of the 4th Marquess in 1947 the castle and park were presented to the city and were opened to the public. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan (ref: PGW(Gm)22(CDF).